Annie

Getting older and wiser means taking the guilt out of your guilty pleasures. Annie serves up opulent dance pop -- all white fur coats and milk served in champagne glasses, the kind of thing you might expect from an unlikely mating of Beyoncé and the Tom Tom Club, or Vanity and Junior Senior. If Anniemalmerely dressed up commercial pop with indie cred, it would be a forgettable sleight of hand, but Annie playfully toys with the conventions of easy-pleasy club anthems. "Chewing Gum" takes breathlessly phone-sexed vocals and builds them into layers of slippery sliced beats and stuttering moans that softly detonate like fireworks in the backdrop. Pop music doesn't have to bottom-feed. In Annie's able hands, it's decadently triumphant.